Amsterdam is what happens when you program an AI to create a movie using the prompts "American Eccentric Cinema", "Jules et Jim", and "Oscar please". The output is an ugly surrealist homunculus; a collection familiar ideas and celebrity faces, all smeared into one ill-shapen fleshy hedge. Counting the problems Amsterdam would require one of those AI hands with dozens of fingers.
The movie centres around two friends in 1930s New York who find themselves at the centre of a murder mystery. The murder in question is an incredibly silly one: a mysterious figure pushes a poorly CGI'd woman in front of a car, in full view of a street of people, then he points to the two heroes and says, "those two did it!", and that works somehow. The magic of editing was apparently on his side. It is not on the side of the visual narrative however. Practically every scene is poorly directed and edited, to the point that it becomes a chore to follow or make sense of it. Some of it is definitely a deliberate stylistic choice (a bad one), but some also appear to be because the director doesn't have the first idea about where to put the camera. Amsterdam wants to call attention to its own film making, a bit like with Wes Anderson and his meticulously contrived shots, but Amsterdam lacks the confidence and eye for detail to pull it off.
The movie is crammed with stars, and it says little for the value of Star power that so many big names failed to draw even a modest audience. Everyone gets wasted in the movie, and not in a fun prohibition era sense. A lot of them seemed bored with their bit role, up to and including its star, Christian Bale, who for the first time in ages gets to play a (nominally) comedic character. Which leads me to the humour; this is ostensibly a comedy as well as a murder mystery, but the screenwriting is as clumsy as the direction. If it weren't for the awkward pauses for laughter that follow each gag, you wouldn't know you've been told a joke in the first place. The rest of the dialogue is similarly flabby and uninteresting.
I've spent enough time talking about this film. Amsterdam is a boring movie that apes so many better movies and directors, and fails to understand the qualities that made them great. Your time is worth more than the two hours and 11 minutes it takes to watch this. The only value I had from this movie is that it inspired me to go read about The Business Plot on wikipedia. That entry is better written than the movie, to say nothing else.
Worse Anderson
Amsterdam is what happens when you program an AI to create a movie using the prompts "American Eccentric Cinema", "Jules et Jim", and "Oscar please". The output is an ugly surrealist homunculus; a collection familiar ideas and celebrity faces, all smeared into one ill-shapen fleshy hedge. Counting the problems Amsterdam would require one of those AI hands with dozens of fingers.
The movie centres around two friends in 1930s New York who find themselves at the centre of a murder mystery. The murder in question is an incredibly silly one: a mysterious figure pushes a poorly CGI'd woman in front of a car, in full view of a street of people, then he points to the two heroes and says, "those two did it!", and that works somehow. The magic of editing was apparently on his side. It is not on the side of the visual narrative however. Practically every scene is poorly directed and edited, to the point that it becomes a chore to follow or make sense of it. Some of it is definitely a deliberate stylistic choice (a bad one), but some also appear to be because the director doesn't have the first idea about where to put the camera. Amsterdam wants to call attention to its own film making, a bit like with Wes Anderson and his meticulously contrived shots, but Amsterdam lacks the confidence and eye for detail to pull it off.
The movie is crammed with stars, and it says little for the value of Star power that so many big names failed to draw even a modest audience. Everyone gets wasted in the movie, and not in a fun prohibition era sense. A lot of them seemed bored with their bit role, up to and including its star, Christian Bale, who for the first time in ages gets to play a (nominally) comedic character. Which leads me to the humour; this is ostensibly a comedy as well as a murder mystery, but the screenwriting is as clumsy as the direction. If it weren't for the awkward pauses for laughter that follow each gag, you wouldn't know you've been told a joke in the first place. The rest of the dialogue is similarly flabby and uninteresting.
I've spent enough time talking about this film. Amsterdam is a boring movie that apes so many better movies and directors, and fails to understand the qualities that made them great. Your time is worth more than the two hours and 11 minutes it takes to watch this. The only value I had from this movie is that it inspired me to go read about The Business Plot on wikipedia. That entry is better written than the movie, to say nothing else.